Lackluster pretty much from the start, the Blueshirts paid at just about the end, yielding the winning goal at 18:38 of the third period in a 2-1 defeat to the Oilers on Thursday, and were thus unable to get away from the Garden with one point against the 29th-overall team in the NHL.

“We played down to a level instead of going up,” Brad Richards told The Post after his club’s four-game winning streak was so rudely interrupted.

“We had the puck on our stick a few times to win the game, and if we had we’d be in here saying we did just enough to win, but instead we wound up doing enough to lose.”

Richards was one of the culprits on an unmarked Nail Yakupov’s winner from the slot that finished off a shift on which the Rangers were repeatedly beaten to and for the puck in their own end while matched against Edmonton’s top line.

“As a team with a minute-and-a-half left, we have to have [better] coverage in our own end and know where their guys are; that’s their top line,” said Cam Talbot, faultless on the winner that ticked off Chris Kreider’s stick on the way toward the netminder. “You can’t leave a guy alone in the slot like that.”

It appeared as if Kreider was the culpable party on the slot coverage. But no one on the ice — and that would have been Richards, Kreider, Ryan Callahan, Ryan McDonagh and Anton Stralman — was able to come up with the puck when it was up for grabs, as it was several times during the sequence in the Blueshirts’ zone.

“The winning goal was five guys on the ice getting beat to a loose puck, [the Oilers] protecting the puck and finding the open man all alone in the slot,” coach Alain Vigneault said. “We were trying to block the shot and it goes off our stick and in.

“There were five puck battles and we lost them, and it ends up in the back of our net.”

The Rangers, who face the Penguins in Pittsburgh on Friday night in their final match before the Olympic recess, had issues all night. Their breakouts were broken-down. Their play through the neutral zone was choppy. Their forecheck against the team with the NHL’s worst goals-against average was intermittent and largely ineffective.

The Rangers did get 36 shots on 65 attempts against Ben Scrivens, but the goaltender who shut out the Rangers 1-0 at the Garden on Nov. 17 while he was playing for the Kings and who recorded an NHL-record 59-save shutout against the Sharks for the Oilers on Jan. 29, sure wasn’t worked above and beyond.

“I don’t know if we shot the puck enough to produce rebounds,” Richards said. “Still, we had our chances.”

They never had a single chance on the power play, failing to earn a man-advantage for the first time this season. Referees Chris Lee and Dan O’Halloran had a pretty loose interpretation of the rule book, but the Rangers sure never forced them to make a call, either.

“Maybe we didn’t have the puck enough in the areas we needed to,” Richards said. “I don’t think we can blame the game on not getting a power play.”

The Blueshirts fell behind 1-0 on Ryan Smyth’s goal at 2:56 of the first following a turnover on a defensive exchange between Kevin Klein and Brian Boyle. They tied it at 0:22 of the second on Derick Brassard’s one-timer off a feed from Mats Zuccarello after Benoit Pouliot forced a giveaway.

Callahan had the best chances the remainder of the match to break the tie, first being stopped by Scrivens on a shorthanded breakaway with 8:50 remaining in the second before missing the net on a pair of close-in tries from both the right and left with under five minutes to go in regulation.

At least the captain was visible, which was more than you could say about the Derek Stepan-Rick Nash-Kreider unit on this night, when the Rangers almost got away with one but couldn’t even get away with one point.